The new book centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
